Review: Krave Cereal (Now with More Chocolate!)

Krave sounds like the perfect vehicle for exciting, limited edition cereal flavors. Its semi-hollow, chocolate-striped biscuits could be filled with any number of wacky tastes.

Krave could pair the chocolate with a peanut butter ribbon, pipette some strawberry filling in there for Valentine’s Day, layer on some banana for Elvis Presley’s birthday, or heck: just dip every pillowy rectangle in fudge and sprinkles. I like to imagine that all these ideas even got brought up at Kellogg’s last marketing meeting…but then that one guy in the back of the room—you know, that guy— shouted above everyone else with his mouth full of the break room’s last doughnut:

My initial, gut reaction after munching into a few (by which I mean “a few more than an average grizzly bear would eat in a single paw-ful”) biscuits and analyzing their nebulous brown innards? This new Krave certainly seems more buttery and chocolaty—or at least a bit more plump and dense.

But that could just be a placebo effect. I knew I was going to need to be a little more scientific, so I hunted down some standard issue, pre-chocolate booster shot Krave to compare.

Huzzah! My Krave-tuition was correct! Now More Chocolate Krave is slightly more bulbous than its predecessor, with a weightier crunch and a noticeably thicker chocolate filling.

How much thicker? Only about 20–30%, so not quite the “reverse Stephen King gypsy” effect I was hoping for. But the important difference is textural. See, the old Krave chocolate is shiny and smooth—like the butter on a plastic play food toast slice. This new stuff is squishier, crumblier, and tastes cocoa butterier.

Is it worth getting excited about, though? That depends on how much Krave you eat—and how you like to eat your s’mores. I like to think that I’ve eaten enough Krave to earn a place on some sort of “Global Lifetime Krave Consumption Power Ranking,” and the fact that I’d put such an accomplishment on my resume is a testament to how much I love the stuff.

So I can definitely notice the difference, but sporadic Kravers—and that vocal tribe of people who hate this cereal—are unlikely to notice a difference or experience some epiphanic change of heart. If your tongue is tuned into this new Krave’s intricacies, though, your enjoyment of it will hinge on whether you prefer dominant graham flavor or whether you dream of drowning your taste buds in a Wonka-esque river of fudge. If you’re in the former group (like me), start stocking up on the old stuff before it’s too late. But if you’re in the latter?

♫ Come with Krave, and you’ll be, in a world of pure chocolate inundation. ♫

Of course, when you add milk, the subtle differences largely wash away, as the whole bowl becomes the same delightful mush of cream-soaked choco-biscuits you know and (maybe) love. It tastes like a mound of doughy chocolate chip muffins and I love every second of it. Mixing old and new in milk, I couldn’t differentiate between the two: no matter how much chocolate was inside. I like to think there’s some sort of real world metaphor in there, with chocolate representing the goodness in all of us, but my brain is too sugar-addled to wax philosophical.

So I’ll just eat more Krave instead, because even though I prefer my s’mores heavy on the graham,* I’ll stick by Krave until the very end. Double Chocolate Krave is getting the “More Chocolate” treatment, too, so I can only hope that the brand will continue to evolve—hopefully with some sort of cookies and cream variety.

*Sorry marshmallowy s’mores fans: Krave S’Mores is probably the best you’ll ever get. Unless you wedge some Lucky Charms into a hollowed-out biscuit.

The Bowl: “Now More Chocolate” Krave Cereal

The Breakdown: For better or worse, this stuff does have roughly 25% more chocolate. This Krave’s good, fudgy fun, but I have to wonder what could’ve been if Kellogg’s tried something more innovative.

The Bottom Line: 8 Krave biscuits with failed New Year’s Resolutions out of 10

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